Tara Lipinski was a sprightly 15-year-old ballerina-on-ice when she won figure skating gold at the 1998 Nagano Olympics.

Sarah Hughes but a year older when she did the same thing four years later in Salt Lake City.

In fact, six of the past seven Olympic champions in women’s figure skating were old enough to dangle a gold medal around their neck but unable to buy a celebratory bottle of champagne — at least in the U.S. That includes reigning champion Alina Zagitova, who had yet to turn 16 when she stood on the top step of the podium in Pyeongchang.

It all raises an age-old question in figure skating: How old is too old?

Of the three American women competing at the Beijing Games next week, 25-year-old Mariah Bell and 22-year-old Karen Chen are older than every gold medalist since 1932 save one: Japan’s Shizuka Arakawa, who had just turned 24 before the 2006 Turin Games. In fact, Bell and Chen are older than all three medalists from the 2018 Games.

“I remember the first time someone asked me what it felt like to be a veteran and I was so shocked,” said Chen, who was 11th as an 18-year-old in Pyeongchang. “In my mind, I’m so young. I’m a 15-year-old. But I’m definitely not. I’m 22.”

If that makes Chen old by figure skating standards, her teammate is positively ancient.

After barely missing out on the Olympic team four years ago, Bell continued to skate in the face of all the naysayers that tried to call her over the hill. It didn’t matter that the crowd favorite would be a full decade older than Lipinski or Zagitova when they won their Olympic gold medals, only that she still had the inner passion of a teenager.

Bell was rewarded for sticking with it, too. She won her first national championship in her ninth try earlier this month in Nashville, becoming the oldest American skater to win the women’s title in 95 years.